Sunday, March 18, 2007

Song of Office Space, Ice and Fire

Back in my early blogger days, I wrote a post about how I consider South Park a good resource on parenting. All my three and a half readers were very impressed. Likewise, when I read and re-read the Song of Ice and Fire series, I see it not as a tale of a remote fantasy world, but as the best resource on office politics I have ever read. I saw the reviews on Amazon once. "Where are the monsters?", people bitched. What they need to understand is that this series is not about the monsters. This series is about surviving in a modern-day corporate America. I changed jobs recently. After I realized (pretty soon) that my new place is an extremely political environment, I picked up SoIaF and re-read all four books cover to cover. I feel a lot more confident in my new place of work now.

Every day, when I wake up, I dream of a perfect IT department, populated entirely with characters from the series. It's pretty much a no-brainer, for example, that Ned Stark should be the corporate CIO. He's an honest guy with tremendous integrity. You don't have to worry about him selling his people down the river outsourcing the entire department to Bangalore because he thinks he may get a fat bonus for doing that.

Jon Snow, in my ideal IT, would be the manager of production support. Zombies, irate users, wights, clueless helpdesk technicians from Bangalore... he has ample experience dealing with all of those. In my divisional IT department, Tyrion Lannister would be the IT manager. The man is unbelievably smart and creative, wants to do good by his people, and can play politics with the best of them when the need arises. For my direct supervisor, I'd choose his brother Jaime. He is intelligent and plays fair, but, most importantly, he's happy with the position he's in, so he won't try some stupid shit in the hopes that it would get him promoted. For my teammates, I choose Brienne of Tarth and Barristan Selmy. They have the work ethics; they won't make me take their blame or dump their work on me; and they will always have my back when things get tough. And I will treat them the same, because, incidentally, that's how I operate. If only I worked in an IT department like that, I dream, I'd never have to change jobs again.

And if you guys think I'm a crazy dreamer, then tell me why, all too often, we end up reporting to people like Cersei and Mad Aerys and the three Baratheon brothers? I worked for a Gregor Clegane once. Remember? The guy who burned his little brother half to death, and his Dad covered it all up and made him knight? Here's what happened with the man I worked for. When he was a teenager, he and a group of friends stopped a random guy on the street and beat him to death. After our hero got out of jail, his rich parents used their connections and made him IT director. Pretty sweet huh? I didn't know the story back at the time - all I could see was people suddenly leaving in droves.

So, you see what I mean? This series is totally about office life. GRRM has described it precisely. Now, if someone could get him to finish the fifth book already, because there are a few situations at my office that I need his advice on.